This event will feature interesting discussions about how the gender gaps in technology, telecom and media can be addressed. We will have guest speaker Jane Wilson, Director, Women Services and Resource Development at Community MicroSkills Development Centre. Here’s a recent media interview with Jane:

We’re enthusiastic to partner with Women in Communications and Technology National Capital Region Chapter (@WCT_NCR) for tonight’s Wine Down December Edition! Join us at Hintonburg’s 10fourteen (@10fourteen) from 5:30 to 7:30 pm to network and chat about current issues and technology, and enjoy 10fourteen’s ever-changing Discovery Monday wine menu.

Registration for this edition includes one complimentary glass of wine from the 10fourteen Discovery Monday selection available that evening and hors d’oeuvres. Other beverages and food options will be available, but are not included in the price of registration.

The internet of everything is everywhere. It’s nigh on impossible to avoid mention of the hottest new wearable device or self-driving car in the media these days. But what is it, why should we care and what does it mean for businesses? Is it over-hyped, or the next big thing?

Did you know:

Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020.

By 2019, the Enterprise IoT sector is estimated to account for nearly 40% or 9.1 billion devices.

The UK Government allocated £40,000,000 towards research into the Internet of Things in their 2015 budget.

The concept of a network of smart devices was discussed as early as 1982, with a modified Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University becoming the first internet-connected appliance, able to report its inventory and whether newly loaded drinks were cold.

Understanding the market potential and where to place bets in the internet of everything is as unwieldy as the name suggests. There exists a multitude of communications protocols, nascent ecosystems and emerging service & business models creating a complex landscape for market entrants to penetrate. Companies, established and new, are lining up for a piece of the business and placing their bets. Who will emerge victorious?

In this talk Treena will discuss some of the technology, market and patent trends driving the internet of things.

Speaker Bio:

Treena Grevatt (@tgrevatt) is Director of Marketing, Intellectual Property Services at TechInsights (@techinsightsinc), an Ottawa-HQ’d global provider of technical analysis and patent portfolio services to the world’s leading technology firms.

She holds a Ph.D. in ultrafast laser spectroscopy and a BSc in physics with laser science from the University of Southampton and worked for seven years in high speed laser manufacturing at Nortel. Treena was formerly Product Manager at DISTIL Interactive, an award winning web-based learning games start-up. Prior to that she served as a Professor and Program Coordinator of the Bachelor of Applied Technology degree in Photonics at Niagara College, with responsibility for designing, delivering, and managing curriculum across an innovative technology program. She was co-founder and Chief Community Officer for Betidings, a social networking start-up for event discovery.

Treena is an avid user of Twitter; a keen cyclist & professional cycling fan; and outdoor enthusiast. A professional bike fitter in her spare time she is passionate about creating a comfortable experience for new riders. Despite being a ‘recovering physicist’ she remains an advocate for public understanding of science / technology and observer of technology trends.

Learn what it’s like working at the fastest growing start-up in Ottawa from our Shopify guest speakers. You will also hear the mission and mandate of WCT and WPT. This will be followed by small group discussions on topics to help you advance your career and achieve your goals in technology and communications.

Riddle me this: who has two legs and chases politicians around Centre Block, types fast enough on a smart phone to live-tweet a committee meeting, has over 18K followers on Twitter, and spends their free time watching loads of Netflix?

On March 26, 2015, Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa uncovers the life of political journalist Laura Payton.

From Saskatchewan to Ottawa, to Vancouver then back to Ottawa, Laura’s journalistic adventures have taken her from crime and animal stories, to chasing politicians down hallways and covering some of the most prolific scandals and election shenanigans.

Since completing a master of journalism at Carleton University in 2007, Laura has spear-headed her career to become one of Ottawa’s prolific political journalists, as well as a social media influencer with over 18,000 followers on Twitter.

But, we can all agree success does not come without risks, setbacks or competition.

Join us for a candid presentation on a “day in the life of a Laura Payton,” her experiences and lessons learned as a woman in political journalism, the shifts of technology and social media in journalism, and how she became a key influencer on the Hill and online.

Who said algorithms were only for computers! On January 29, 2015, Melanie Coulson delved into the magic algorithm of storytelling (Click here to view her presentation). As an award-winning journalist and currently United Way Ottawa’s Director of Communications and Content, Melanie is a wizard with words and her advice to Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa’s audience was to MAKE MAGIC!

The magic of storytelling is: compelling content = conversions ($$)

The algorithm for compelling content is: CC = UA + GS + D x S

Understand your audience (UA)

Create a bond with your audience. Know their voice and preferred channel of communication. Are you writing for women over age 60 who are retired and care about helping puppies and children in need? Or are you writing for a man in his mid-30s who is career-driven, lives a fast-paced life and doesn’t have children?

Tell a great story (GS)

A great story starts with a message then immediately hooks in the reader. Nowadays, digital audiences are fickle and have short attention span. Focus your energy on the lead which should be 25 words or less. The internet waters are full of fish so how is your message going to rise above the current. You should also find great characters. You might be thinking “but we sell hard drives, how can we create or find a character when we sell simple hard drives.” There’s most likely someone in your network who has experienced a devastating computer crash and lost all of their files and hard work. They then decided to purchase one of your hard drives and now feel secure and protected from future crashes. No matter how simple or diverse your product or campaign, map out all the potential story angles and find that character. And don’t forget about the setting; the atmosphere in which you want to tell your story. What emotion do you want readers or viewers to feel and how will the setting create that emotion.

Decide how to tell your story (D)

This is where direction and planning come into play. Create a content team. Declare a managing editor. Use tools such as an editorial calendar in an excel sheet or on a white board in the boardroom. Build a story around everything you do. Anything that your company does internally or in the community, create a story. Develop strong visuals such as photos or video. No stone left unturned.

Share your story (S)

Social media now gives storytellers more power than ever before. Share your story on every social network you can and ask for your community’s support. Use tools such as Storify and Buzzfeed. Use crowd sourcing as a way to generate stories with impact, a human touch. Make sure every story has a purpose, a call to action. Without this, readers won’t know what to do next or where to go.

In the spirit of storytelling, Melanie has reached out to the GGDOttawa community for their support for a mini-campaign to help sheltered girls aged 12-20 have access to wifi so they can search for jobs and look for permanent housing. Until February 28, we have an opportunity to make a difference in another girl’s life. Please click here to join the Bring Wifi to Evelyn House campaign.

Thank you to our event door prize sponsor CanvasPop and congratulations to our three winners.

Join us for our next event Wednesday February 25, 2015 featuring Allison Malloy, Software Engineer at Kongsberg Gallium, who will present about drones used in commercial situations such as Amazon.com using drones to deliver packages, and agriculture, law enforcement, underwater exploration, as well as defence/military.

You may have heard Amazon.com using drones to deliver packages or the Canadian military using drones in battle, or law enforcement using drones as tactical tools.

Unmanned vehicles, a.k.a. drones, are used today in more ways than we might realize.

Allison Malloy, software engineer at Kongsberg Gallium, joins us Wednesday, February 25th to discuss how drones are used in commercial situations (like Amazon.com) as well as agriculture, law enforcement, underwater exploration, and in defence/military sectors.

Allison is a software engineer turned project manager with a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Masters of Systems and Computer Engineering. She ‘stumbled’ into the defence industry 13 years ago and hasn’t looked back. Allison will share with us her own work on the command and control aspects of drone usage; her work in the Canadian defence industry; and how those two worlds intersect with other better known technology fields such as web development, graphic design, and video gaming.

Melanie Coulson, United Way Ottawa’s Director, Communications and Content, has been telling stories since she was about two years old. She turned this passion for characters, setting and plot into a profession. Melanie (@mel_coulson) has more than 15 years experience as an award-winning senior-level journalist in the country’s top newsrooms. She has worked in digital media since 1999 – she was globeandmail.com‘s first hire as the news organization shaped what would become its online operation. She continues her love for delivering good stories about the lives changed by United Way Ottawa; and teaches digital journalism at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.

Join us on Thursday, January 29th as Melanie discusses how

understanding your audience will allow you to create compelling content that begs to be shared. She will delve into the United Way’s digital content strategy and how they use online media to engage donors and show how they are changing lives. As a former journalist, Melanie believes no stone should be left unturned – so come with your questions!

Do you know how to gather the right data to help you achieve your business goals? Are you looking for new ways to measure social media success?

On November 26, Shawna Tregunna, founder of ReSoMe (Relevant Social Media), helped answer these questions and showed attendees how to maximize readily accessible data to measure success in social media activities.

When developing a measurement strategy, it’s important to answer what makes a great metric. Two factors should be considered: what type of measurement is relevant to the success of the business and does the measurement provide actionable insights.

Once you determine how to measure your social media data, next step is figuring out what you have to compare the data to in order for it to be purposeful for the business.

Shawna provided a great model explaining the marketing sales funnel and its customer touch points the buyer journey:

Here are four key metrics to help measure the success of your funnel:

Number of opportunities in your funnel and the rate at which you are acquiring these opportunities – or arrival rate.

The total possible value of every deal in your funnel or total funnel value.

Average amount of time prospects are in the sales funnel until they are acquired.

Average percentage of closes that your team effectively navigates through your funnel.

Shawna advises to not make the mistake of front-loading your sales funnel hoping that it will result in more sales. Take the “Groupon effect” as an example. Offering a truck load of special offers or discounts that attracts volume may not be viable if you don’t have a solid grasp on how your business is currently performing. The key is to making sure your prospects are qualified leads and you’re capable of nurturing them through the sales process and maximizing the impact points in which the leads encounter. Impact points represent the impact on the ability of your business to make money. Every impact point has the ability to make or lose money. For example, employees fall under Cost Centre, but by enabling and encouraging employees on social media, this is an opportunity to turn a cost into a profit.

Impact Points

Profit Centre

Savings Centre

Cost Centre

Acquisitions

Retention

Up-sell

Cross-sell

User-generated content

Referrals

Support Centre

Advertising

Employees

Another method to maximize social media data is integrating with your CRM (customer relationship module). By including customer social media information, you can tie online actions to specific clients within the sales process. Facebook ads also allow you to customize your target audience by email. If your clients email is associated with their Facebook profile, you can create targeted ads and messaging just for clients or prospects.

Shawna capped off the presentation with suggestions for free tools that can help you track and measure:

Riffle – tells you which tools your competition is using, your ratio of posts (new posts, retweets and replies – are you just pushing content or engaging on a regular basis), and top hashtags.

Alexa – learn how your website is ranked via traffic, but ensure you understand your business goals to understand purpose of traffic. Can also provide you with competitive analysis. If social media is driving traffic to your website, what’s your activity compared to your competitors?

Moz link data – measures the quality of inbound links. For example, when you Google search cars in Ottawa, who ranks first? Google takes linking into consideration when ranking search results. How can social media help influence your ranking? Maximize influencers and audience engagement so they direct traffic to your website.

Click here to view Shawna’s presentation Accessible Metrics that Matter. You can also check out our hashtag feed to read what attendees shared and check out our event photos on Facebook.

Don’t forget to save the date! Our next Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa event will be January 29, 2015 featuring Melanie Coulson about how charitable giving is now hi-tech. Stay tuned for more details!

On behalf of the GGDOttawa Organizing Team, have a safe and happy holiday!

Ottawa Girl Geek Dinners are an offshoot of the London Girl Geek Dinners, started by Sarah Blow. The goal of these get-togethers is to make technology accessible and interesting to all age groups and all people, particularly women.

These monthly events are aimed at providing a welcoming atmosphere and a platform for learning in an informal environment. They are always held in pubs, bars or restos and there is usually a speaker (or several) who talk for a short while on a chosen subject for the evening.

Follow us on Twitter @ggdottawa
The hash tag for our events is: #ggdottawa